The whole 2012 holiday shopping rush typically doesn’t start until November, but Amazon’s decided not to take any chances and begin its push for your money a tad early. It has just revealed a custom Xbox 360 bundle that seems like it’s not a bad deal and might actually entice more than a few shoppers. It’s a $229 Xbox 360 Entertainment Bundle and, as you can guess, it focuses on the system as a media device for your living room.
The Amazon Xbox 360 Entertainment Bundle seems like it has everything someone would need to start enjoying an Xbox 360. You get the basic 4GB console, one of the newer models that doesn’t break down as often as the originals. You also get a media remote, a three month Xbox Live Gold subscription, download codes for Lode Runner, R-Type Dimensions and Snoopy: Flying Ace so you have something to play and $10 in Amazon Instant Video credit so you can grab things to watch. The credit is added to your account and the downloadable games’ codes are emailed to you after the bundle ships. The normal price of the bundle is $284.97, but Amazon chops just over $55 off to make it $229.

The thing is, I don’t think 4GB is going to offer enough space to people who grab this Xbox 360 Entertainment Bundle. It’s not unusual for XBLA downloadable games to be at least 500MB-1GB in size and you know downloading media from Amazon Instant Video is going to take up some room as well. Basically, you’ll probably grab this bundle and then end up needing to spend $20-100 on a bigger hard drive. 4GB doesn’t get you anywhere. My PS3 started with an 80GB hard drive and that filled up in under a year!

Basically, I’m saying to think before you buy. Don’t feel like you have to rush to buy Amazon’s Xbox 360 Entertainment Bundle. It isn’t going anywhere. Amazon’s fine print says it will be available until December 31, 2012. Do some window shopping, check out the Black Friday 2012 ads and then, after you’ve seen what else there is, you can decide if you want this bundle or some other one.